


Free the Birds

by BasicallyAnIdiot



Series: The Little Uzushio Chronicles [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: "You have been Uzumaki'ed", AwesomeMom!Kushina, Caged Bird Curse Seal Vs. Uzumaki Naruto, Fix-It, Fuinjutsu, Gen, Little Uzushio, Naruto is not dumb, The 'Caged Bird Fiasco'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-14 16:56:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13594398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BasicallyAnIdiot/pseuds/BasicallyAnIdiot
Summary: In which Naruto happens to the Hyuuga traditions.





	Free the Birds

**Author's Note:**

> Well. I hadn't planned on writing this. Hadn't even considered the Hyuuga Clan and their Caged Bird Curse Seal or how that would work in 'The Little Uzushio Chronicles'. Then I read a comment from LitaJ bringing up that very point and from there the plotbunnies just wouldn't stop.
> 
> I'll return to the world-building side of things soon. Hopefully. Or to Obito. Or Team Minato. Or Team Kakashi. Or Minato and Kushina dating. Or Iruka, because he hasn't shown up yet, either now that I think about it. Mito still needs screen-time, too. Not to mention ANBU versus Young!Naruto. Or how the Uchiha are handling their neighbours. Or the rest of Konoha for that matter.
> 
> ... This is getting wildly out of hand.

**Free the Birds**

Naruto beamed up at her, proud of his accomplishment. It was quite the accomplishment too- he had managed the near impossible- but in the kind of way that left Kushina feeling momentarily faint. Like when Team Minato returned from the bridge mission without Obito. (In a moment of paranoia, Kushina flared chakra to the seal on her arm- Obito was fine, alive and somewhere in Water Country. Alive, but grumpy.)

She sat down slowly at the kitchen table of her apartment and stared at her nine year old son grinning at her. She had heard it before, but after Naruto said 'blank eyes', 'broken seal' and 'I fixed it, ka-san!' the first time, the side of her brain that she stuffed the Clan Head part of her stopped working. Simultaneously, the part of her that was a mother was over the moon in joy because her little boy was growing up to be an Uzumaki seals master and going to carry on the clan's noble tradition of being super strong (though perhaps absentminded. She hadn't forgotten about how Kayame-chan had once walked into a pole while discussing trap seals- and kept on defending her point about a four base). Kushina reconciled both sides with a somewhat baffled, “You did what?”

Her son rolled those pretty blue eyes of his. Between his hair and his eyes, Naruto was a mini-Minato in appearance and those kunoichi in his class wouldn't know what to do when he got his growth spurt. Heck, once people could look past her Jinchuriki status and being a foreigner they might remember it takes two people to have a kid. Naruto's parentage was practically an open secret in the shinobi circles. Honestly, how many blondes were there in Konoha, anyway? So what, she and Minato didn't marry under Konoha traditions. Uzushio's wedding traditions were way better- there was more food involved for one. And having met the Sandaime's grandson she regrets absolutely nothing about raising Naruto as an Uzumaki instead of a Namikaze and keeping the 'Hokage's Kid' title as far away from Naruto as she could. _Her_ son would not be a spoiled brat.

She already her hands full anyway; because Naruto's attitude, as is?

All Uzumaki.

“I just told you, ka-san!” He whined, bouncing on his feet. "Weren't you listening to me?"

“I know, and I was!” Kushina shot back, still feeling faint. She took a breath and used her most authoritative voice she could muster in her mom-mode. “But just tell me again so we’re clear.”

Her son huffed but started again, “So I was at the playground with Sasuke-chan and Itachi-nii and there were these kids with blank eyes only they weren’t really playing which was a shame ‘cause it’s a nice day, Ya know-“ Naruto inhaled and kept right on going, “so then something happened and the littlest girl did some jutsu or something and boy fell to the ground screaming, but Itachi-nii said it wasn’t our business and to ignore it but he said it with a frown like he didn't like it but he still pulled Sasuke-chan and me-“

“I,” Kushina corrected, absently watching for signs of oxygen deprivation in her son.

“- I away from the park.” Naruto took a breath, “So I slipped Itachi-nii and went back to the park-“

“Hold up!” Kushina made a ‘t’ with her hands. She hadn’t caught _that_ on the first tell-through. “You slipped Itachi-chan? How?”

Naruto fidgeted under the interruption, “Well Sasuke-chan agreed with me that it was odd, so he started badgering Itachi-nii to teaching him a new fire jutsu and got right into acting dejected and hu-huffy?” Naruto frowned and mouthed the word again before shrugging, “And when Itachi-nii was trying to reassure him, I ducked away and hid my chakra like you taught me too after the compound expansion project and made my way back to the park-”

“You and Sasuke-chan tag-teamed Itachi-chan?” How had Kushina missed that? It was a grand moment if Naruto and Sasuke finally realized that if they worked together they could take on bigger and badder opponents. Or give their Jounin-sensei the runaround when they became genin. Or maybe just not fighting each other in her home when one of them looked at the other funny. She had _liked_ that vase, you know?

“Well, duh?” Naruto said with a tilt of his head and some confusion, and he was just as cute as his dad was when confused. Kushina bit back her cackles; Itachi was never going to live this down- especially when Kushina told Mitoko at tea tomorrow. Being outsmarted by a pair of nine-year olds? Oh yeah, blackmail for days. She'd have to swing by Minato's office and mention it loud enough for his ANBU guards to hear. That should get it into the shinobi grapevine well enough.

She ignored the fact the Naruto had successfully managed to evade the entire Police Force for a full day when he was six, only to be caught when he got hungry and came home for supper, and no one had ever really managed to catch Naruto unless he wanted to be caught since. In fact, telling the ANBU guards Naruto had managed to give the Uchiha heir the dust would probably just increase their interest in Naruto, and there were already rumours circulating that if a shinobi or kunoichi really wanted to get the ANBU corps' attention, catching Naruto would do it. She had to leave more escape and evasion tactic books and movies around for Naruto get his grubby paws on. “Okay, so you went back to the park?” Kushina prompted.

“Yeah! And when I got there the boy was sitting under a tree and looking really sad and so I went up to him and asked him if he was okay and he started talking about fate and destiny and stuff and told me about this seal on his forehead and I said that was going to be an Uzumaki seals master one day, ya know so he should let me look at it.” Her son took another breath, “And so he showed me this seal and it was a broken one- foreign chakra could interfere with its working and that was what had happened when the little girl practiced her jutsu- I think it may be a radius thing and that any chakra in the vicinity could frigg with it like Kensuke-oji-san theorized a couple of years ago about-”

“Naruto.” Kushina said snapping her fingers in his face as he went deeper into his concentration mode trying to figure the seal out. If she didn't bring him back soon, he chase that thought until he figured it out. And worse. She'd follow that thought too and before long Minato would come home to a kitchen table buried under scrolls and inks and books and test subjects - usually a reluctant Itachi or Shisui depending on who could be bribed with having the next invention of the Uzumaki Seals Corp before the rest of the ANBU. And people thought Minato was the absentminded one when seals were involved. “We’ll talk about the theory later. Right now, I need to know what happened at the park.”

Her blonde hellion shook his head, sunshine locks bouncing, “Right. Well, once I got a good look at it it was easy to figure out what was causing Neji-chan the headache. So, I fixed it!”

“You fixed it.” Kushina repeated slowly, this is where her mind shut down before. Now she knew why because, oh. This had all the hallmarks of a blow-up between clans. “How, exactly, did you fix it?”

Ah- there was the Uzumaki pride. Naruto’s chest puffed out and he crossed his arms triumphantly, and he beamed up at his mother. “Well, Neji-chan said that the seal was to protect his dojutsu so no one could take his eyes, so I left that part of the seal alone.” Kushina was going to leave offerings at every single temple in Konoha for that small blessing- hopefully the goddess who had intervened and prevented Naruto from single-handedly setting off a clan war in Konoha would receive it all. “But the broken part was tied directly to a jutsu of some sort so I severed that part and finished the seal so that the eye-protecting thingy was actually strengthened because seals are suppose to help our allies, right ka-san?!”

There was the beaming again, and goddesses above, Naruto looked so proud of himself. Hearing the story a second time, however, did not alleviate Kushina’s concerns.

On the one hand, Naruto had pulled off what she had been wanting to do since she first heard about the Caged Bird Curse Seal and she really wanted to reward him with ramen or something. Those scribbles of the Hyuuga were a travesty of seal work and grated against everything she had ever been taught about seals. Seals were to help allies, not cage them, and certainly not punish them- not in the way the Hyuuga did to their clanmates. There was a _reason_ why it was considered a 'curse seal'. The Sage knew that Kushina had enough of a fight on her hands to convince the seals corp that stealing into the Hyuuga compound to ‘fix’ the problem was a Bad Idea.

On the other hand, when Kushina had petition for clan status to be granted to the Uzumaki, Mito had been quite clear that clans do not interfere with other clans. _Especially_ the Uchiha or Hyuuga. After all, Kushina would not want other clans trying to break into the Uzumaki library or the shrine they had just built on the new lands- the mess left over from the defensive measures alone would be a pain to clean up. In fact, Kushina would be perfectly content if no one outside of the clan knew the library even _existed_. The shrine was pretty though, a tribute to those who didn't survive the fall of Uzushiogakure, and the other clans could go and appreciate the craftsmanship if they wanted. Kushina had done the defensive seals herself- anyone who tried to deface the monument was in for a shock. She got it though. Clans don’t mess with other clans.

Only now Naruto was looking at her with a fading smile and she was deeply torn between grounding him for a month or taking him out for ramen. “Ka-san?” Naruto asked softly, pride disappearing and suddenly her son looked small.

Oh hell. Like there was anything she could do about it _now._

Kushina smiled and shook her head. “Well, that is a very impressive thing you’ve done, Naruto-chan. So impressive, that I think that we should go to Ichiraku's for supper.” She frowned for a moment. There was something else she wanted to do... ah. Right. She reached out and smacked Naruto upside the head. "That's for poking your nose into someone's else seal work! I've told you not to do that! It's rude!"

"But, ka-san!" Naruto whined, hands over where she had hit him, "It was _ugly_! It wasn't even a seal, you know! It was just scribbles with chakra!"

 

* * *

 

It takes Kushina three awkward council meetings, numerous bottles of rice wine of varying quality, a night with Inuzuka Tsume that Kushina will never discuss for as long as she lives, owing like five favours to Hizashi to fix things with Hiashi. 

It takes her _another_ three months of badgering and negotiation with the Hyuuga so that everyone walks away from the matter with enough pretend dissatisfaction with this turn of events that the Hyuuga elders buy it as real, and accept Kensuke’s flowery and overly-elaborate description that the current caged bird curse seal actually makes the Byakugan vulnerable. That Kensuke delivered his report to the Hyuuga Elders in his usual deadpan and 'you're all idiots' tone seemed to endear him to the Elders and the Uzumaki Seals Corp were permitted to fix the rest.

No, Kushina did not understand how that worked either.

The 'Caged Bird Fiasco' also had the fun side effect of giving something for Hiashi to commiserate with Uchiha Fugaku over, bringing both founding clans back to mostly speaking terms again. (“You’ve been Uzumaki’ed” Fugaku said with a sigh to Hiashi after a particularly trying council meeting that attempted to reconcile the situation, “A full recovery of your traditions is not likely.”)

Overall, Kushina thinks she rocks at this politics stuff.

(Minato politely disagrees with his wife and feels the entire thing to be the Uzumaki branching their understanding of explosions from the literal to the figurative with Konoha politics in the crossfire.)


End file.
